A drag queen enters a shop one night in an east London neighborhood. While she waits to be attended to, a group of hypermasculinized men appears. “Hey, look at that, is that a guy? Fucking faggots.” “You have to be one to know,” the drag queen answers. The next thing is a brutal beating in the middle of the street. From here, filmmakers Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping build a fantastic “psychological, twisted and erotic” thriller, Femme, one of the recent discoveries of the new British cinema.
Jules’ life and career are destroyed after the attack, until one day, in a gay sauna, he bumps into his attacker, a guy who obviously hides his sexual orientation. Without the makeup, Preston does not recognize him and he takes the opportunity to begin a strategy of seduction and revenge. The result is a film that explodes conventions about sexuality, masculinity, patriarchy and identity.
“The objective was to tell a story with a ‘queer’ protagonist far from victimhood”
“Against colonizing the mainstream”, telling a story with a queer protagonist far from victimhood, turning the classic masculinity of the noir genre on its head and, most especially, “exploring the reality of the characters and how the world in which they live pushes them to to do the things they do” were the objectives of this couple of filmmakers, who with this debut film have won three awards at the British Independent Film Award, the British independent film awards. The lead actors, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett and George Mackay, won the award for best acting duo. In addition, the film won the costume and makeup and hairdressing awards.
Born from an earlier short film that took place in a single night, the film is an exhibition of all the things that “terrify and enrage us as homosexuals,” write in the director’s notes Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping, which They drew on personal stories and their own sense of discomfort in “aggressively heterosexual” spaces, a sense of being emotionally, sometimes even physically, in danger.
Fear, power and masks
Fear, the same one that women have always experienced when walking alone at night on the street, but also the terror of your surroundings discovering your authentic sexual identity are in this story, in which the filmmakers develop the reality motto of the American television RuPaul Drag Race: “We are all born naked, the rest is drag.”
“We all use different types of drag to feel powerful”
Jules’ female drag, which gives her strength and presence in queer territory, and Preston’s male drag, which gives her confidence in her homophobic universe. “We all use different types of drag to feel powerful, to fit in, to hide truths that are too painful to come to light,” the directors say.
A sequence from the film. —YouPlanet
But Femme goes much further by presenting a character who, in her career of seduction and revenge, seeks to regain her power. She is an atypical queer character who moves away from the usual victim narratives or coming out dramas. “The thriller genre is almost exclusively heteronormative, in it we have not seen much evidence of queer existence. We wanted a story with queer protagonists who take revenge, who do dangerous and reckless things, who run through burning buildings, who fight against aliens to save the multiverse and who in the end are rewarded with a kiss from someone of the same sex or gender fluid.
‘Queer Black’
Subversive, with a lot of tension, charged with sexuality, Femme explores the games of dominance and power in relationships, who controls who, who accepts submission; She analyzes the attraction to danger and denounces the perverse threat of the Internet to people’s privacy. It is and is not a love story, it is a thriller of revenge and reparation, and it is an erotic thriller. “Sex is dangerous and, what’s more exciting, danger is sexy,” say the directors.
Directors and screenwriters Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping. —YouPlanet
“Jules is excited by the dangerous actions he undertakes: he feels strengthened by his recklessness, which gives him back the ability to feel sexy again. We have a whole series of erotic thrillers, especially from the 90s, as references of danger as something “sexy.” Finally, Femme is film noir, “queer noir”, in the words of its creators. “It’s a twist on the genre, in which we follow the journey of the femme fatale who insinuates herself into the life and heart of the ‘hero’ to destroy him.
A story of “doomed love,” say Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping, who hope their film shows “both empathy for the pain that drives revenge, and empathy for the self-hatred that drives homophobia.”
2023-12-19 20:21:19
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